Late Night Science
by Southpaw
Summary: Midnight ramblings of a mostly-self-imposed guilty conscience


I honestly don't remember when I wrote this, but it was a long time ago. I'm pretty sure it was from a challenge from another site, but that doesn't really matter now. I still like it, so I decided to post it here.

I don't own the characters, I just somehow have a rather easy time tapping into their angst.

~*~

There is only one window in my laboratory.

Excuse me… his laboratory. I am only borrowing it.

I'm not even tall enough to see out of the window, but it doesn't matter. I come down here trying to satisfy a guilty conscience.

Sometimes he comes down and tells me to go to bed. Some of those times, I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing, that I don't even hear him. Other times I reply with some smart remark like '_you_ stay up all night working sometimes…' I usually get away with it because he knows how important my work is.

Sometimes I doze off at the computer, and then if he's still awake he moves me and puts me in my bed. It frustrates me when that happens, because it means time lost on the project.

Tonight was one of the nights I got away with it.

I spend ten minutes doing homework when I get home from school. It's okay, though, because I usually do most of it during lunch, and only bring home anything there wasn't time to finish. It's really pointless anyway… I've long since moved on to far more difficult problems.

Which brings me back to what I was doing tonight.

I made a breakthrough.

I shouldn't get too excited, because it's such a small step on the long path toward finding a solution. Should I tell that guy? If I do, he'll get excited, and then I'll have to remind him of how small of a step it really is. I don't think I'll tell him… he's more concerned with my actually obtaining the solution.

That chemical compound which will counteract the one I made three years ago.

I came down here after I got home from school (home… that's a funny word…). I quickly got the rest of my homework out of the way, as usual, and then I sat down to my computer. The machine can collect data from the various probes I have sitting in my experiments while I'm gone, so I often set it up to do so. I spent a few hours sifting through everything it had gathered (also as usual), and then I went over to the lab bench to see how the reactions actually looked. Everything appeared to be normal.

I'd been stuck on this step for what felt to be a very long time – figuring out exactly what the problem was. I made the stuff, for crying out loud! In other words, I knew what was in it… but the process of making it is so complicated that the end product has a very specific molecular structure. That made reproducing a testable sample next to impossible.

After checking on the flasks, I went back to my computer to look at the various molecular structures exhibited by the different experiments. Some of the runs from during the day showed similar properties to the little bit I had left from before. That's pretty typical, though, but compounds that act the same might still not _look_ the same. Studying the structures has to be done manually – it's not something I'd like to trust to the computer.

I was surprised when I got to the fifth experiment of the day to notice that the structure looked frighteningly similar to that of the original compound. After all this time…

The gray light coming in that one window is starting to change colors… in another hour or so, he'll call down to me to come up for some breakfast before school. I guess I'll go, it's better than trying to deal with that stuff on an empty stomach. I should let that one reaction go while I'm gone, so that there will be enough sample to work with when I get back.

The light keeps changing… ah, here he is, right on time. I guess it's time for me to get ready to face another day.

I always wonder how that guy does it.

~*~

End

A/N: I hope you guys liked it. If you couldn't tell who's who, the speaker is Ai, "he" is Dr Agasa, and "that guy" is Shinichi.

I am still working on my other story... I was just going through some old stuff, and came across this little gem /smile/.


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